Article inspection system and method

Abstract

An inspection system and method for determining the elemental makeup of contents of an article includes a localizer for identifying at least one region of interest of the article from data representative of contents of the article, the at least one region of interest having a cross-sectional area or a volume that is less than the entire cross-sectional area or the entire volume of the article, an associated particle imaging device that produces an output that is indicative of the elemental makeup of contents of the article, a data selector for selecting a portion of the output of the associated particle imaging device that corresponds to respective identified regions of interest, and an analyzer for analyzing the portions of the output of the associated particle imaging device selected by the data selector to determine the elemental makeup of contents of the article in each identified region of interest.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The invention is in the field of inspection systems to detect suspicious, dangerous and / or illegal materials in articles such as parcels, luggage, vehicles, and shipping containers, etc.DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART[0002]Inspection systems commonly are used to detect drugs, weapons and other illegal items in many different environments, ranging from the inspection of mail, or luggage to the inspection of large freight containers used for shipping materials long distances. In many environments, it is necessary to quickly and accurately inspect a large number of articles in a short period of time. For example, in an airport, it may be necessary to inspect every piece of luggage for illegal drugs or other threats, such as weapons, explosives and / or chemical and biological agents before loading the luggage onto the airplane. Such inspection must be performed quickly and accurately to avoid causing travel delays.[0003]Nuclear inspection systems, such as those...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007]Disclosed is an inspection system that utilizes the API technique to inspect an article for anomalous elements, such as weapons, drugs, explosives, and / or chemical and biological agents, etc. The inspection system includes a localizer for identifying at least one region of interest in the article that has a cross-sectional area or a volume that is less than the entire cross-sectional area or the entire volume of the article. A data selector selects the portions of the API data that correspond to the identified region(s) of interest. An analyzer analyzes the portions of the API data selected by the data selector to determine the elemental makeup of contents of the article in each identified region of interest. Thus, rather than processing all of the API data, the inspection system only processes the API data that corresponds to the identified region(s) of interest. This reduces the overall processing time for each inspected article, thereby increasing the speed of the system.

[0008]The system also may include an imaging device, such as a camera or an x-ray imager, to provide an image of the article being inspected. The localizer can identify the region(s) of interest from areas of uniform density in the image data, which typically are the areas of the article that are likely to contain illegal or dangerous materials. The data selector selects the API data corresponding to the identified areas of uniform density, and only this data is processed by the analyzer. By limiting the analysis to only those areas having a uniform density, the overall amount of data to be processed is reduced. Furthermore, because the API data for other regions of the article is not included in the processed data, the mixing effects caused by other materials in the article are reduced or even eliminated. This reduces the likelihood of false positives and false negatives and also increases the accuracy of the system.

Problems solved by technology

This reduces the overall processing time for each inspected article, thereby increasing the speed of the system.

This reduces the likelihood of false positives and false negatives and also increases the accuracy of the system.

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